There is a well established trend in creating computer games these days. This trend is to make a game NOT fun at all. This happened a while ago and we haven’t noticed it because it didn’t happen suddenly. It was a slow degradation.

How did it happen? I think because game developers forgot what games are meant for. Modern video games have in the essence become movies with rendered graphics. You only control how fast the movie progresses.

How many times have you bought a game thinking it delivered what it promised, only to experience the same repetitive gameplay over and over? These games are developed with a trailer in mind. Game companies try to blind you with flashy effects and trick you into buying the game – NOT fun.

The good news is that this trend is starting to reverse. The successes of indie games like Minecraft in the last year, tell us that millions of gamers are tired of mainstream games and are beginning to see what games should be like and what they themselves enjoy most. This is the beginning of a revolution. A revolution that will show you what video games were always meant to be…

I need to clear my mind about some things and ask my long time readers for some opinions.
You might have read the latest post on the King Arthur’s Gold blog. It’s called Adventures, Overworlds and the Full Version. If you have been following this devlog then you’ll see that there is nothing new there. I’ve talked about these ideas here and here.

Why didn’t I do that with Link-Dead?

Because I was struggling with a solid foundation. This time, with KAG, I have a solid foundation and can build upon it.

“If you please–draw me a sheep . . .”

When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey. Absurd as it might seem to me, a thousand miles from any human habitation and in danger of death, I took out of my pocket a sheet of paper and my fountain-pen. But then I remembered how my studies had been concentrated on geography, history, arithmetic and grammar, and I told the little chap (a little crossly, too) that I did not know how to draw. He answered me:

“That doesn’t matter. Draw me a sheep . . .”

But I had never drawn a sheep. So I drew for him one of the two pictures I had drawn so often. It was that of the boa constrictor from the outside. And I was astounded to hear the little fellow greet it with,

“No, no, no! I do not want an elephant inside a boa constrictor. A boa constrictor is a very dangerous creature, and an elephant is very cumbersome. Where I live, everything is very small. What I need is a sheep. Draw me a sheep.”

So then I made a drawing.

He looked at it carefully, then he said:

“No. This sheep is already very sickly. Make me another.”

So I made another drawing.

My friend smiled gently and indulgently.

“You see yourself,” he said, “that this is not a sheep. This is a ram. It has horns.”

So then I did my drawing over once more.

But it was rejected too, just like the others.

“This one is too old. I want a sheep that will live a long time.”

By this time my patience was exhausted, because I was in a hurry to start taking my engine apart. So I tossed off this drawing.

And I threw out an explanation with it.

“This is only his box. The sheep you asked for is inside.”

I was very surprised to see a light break over the face of my young judge:

“That is exactly the way I wanted it! Do you think that this sheep will have to have a great deal of grass?”

I’m gonna have a lecture about KAG and the process of indie games development on game developers conference in Lodz, Poland (8-11 September) (Zjazd Twórców Gier 2011; jak ktoś chce mnie spotkac to zapraszam w ta sobote:)